8. God’s World Is Orderly & Good
Since God’s creative activity not only brought the universe into existence but also ordered it, the vast and intricate network of relationships among creatures reveals God’s dream for the universe.
God’s world is orderly and good. Everything is located in its proper place and all creatures live together in harmony. The biblical writer even describes God surveying each day’s handiwork and recognizing how “good” it was (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 25). And on the final seventh day, God affirms that the things created are not only good, but “very good” (1:31).
But the biblical writer knows that this ideal world begun at creation is not the world we live in. So, to account for the discrepancy, there is the recognition that God’s original ideal order was disrupted, disordered and disfigured by the sin of the original human beings. Instead of the right relationship to God, the first humans submitted their loyalty and obedience to other powers in order to be like God (Gen 3:5).
Desiring to be like God, their creator, they disobeyed God’s command (Gen 3) and sin enters the world. In its widest, most generic sense, sin describes whatever hinders, harms or destroys the right relationships established by God. With their creation-denying sin, evil enters the world and begins to establish a counter network of wrong relationships, creating the world we know that is filled with injustice, hatred and exploitation instead of the rightly ordered harmony that God had established.
For more, see CCC, #299